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Bezig met laden... Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (2012)door Stephen R. Platt
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. A well written history of the Chinese Civil War/Taiping Rebellion. An interesting read with a concentration on the foreign powers (Britian primarily) and the impact of their actions on the war. ( ) Lacks Exposition and Introduction to Main Historical Figures "Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom" by Jonathan Spence is a well-researched book that covers isolated parts of the Taiping Rebellion. It is not a comprehensive history. The focus of Spence's book is Hong Rengan, a Christian convert who was a distant relative of the Taiping leader. Hong Rengan was absent from the start of the rebellion, and thus the author's narrative begins "en medias res" with only a passing backstory about the rebellion's origins. As Spence writes throughout the book, Hong Rengan was immensely popular among the Western diplomats and missionaries. Thus, much of the book also spends time discussing the missionaries and their lives. "Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom" has a focus on the West's view of events in China - particularly a distrust of the ruling Qing dynasty. As a biography of Hong Rengan and his role as a minister in the rebellion, this is an excellent book. I was looking for a definitive history of the Taiping Rebellion, which this is not. While this book does an excellent job narrating the political events of the Taiping Rebellion, it treats the Taiping movement itself as an "other" around which swirl the machinations of Qing Mandarins and British imperialists. Far too often, I found myself impatient reading about European and American hypocrisy, wishing I could get a sense of what motivated the rebels and how they became such a powerful force.
There should be a term in German that describes the sinking feeling you have when reading a serious book of scholarship, one whose determined author deserves praise and tenure, that no civilian reader should pick up, that will not warm in your hands, that will make you regret the 10 hours of your life lost to it, and that, once put down, will not cry out to be picked back up. “Stephen Platt brings to vivid life a pivotal chapter in China’s history that has been all but forgotten: the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century, which cost one of the greatest losses of life of any war in history. It had far-reaching consequences that still reverberate in contemporary China. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom is a fascinating work by a first-class historian and superb writer.”
This narrative history of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion (which cost some twenty million lives) brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and sometimes gruesome battles--a riveting, both sweeping and intimate portrait of the largest civil war in history. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)951.034History and Geography Asia China and region History 1644-1912 (Qing) Taiping rebellion, 1850-1864LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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